The series follows the adventures of three siblings: the Baudelaire orphans. Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, is fourteen when the series begins and is an inventor. Klaus Baudelaire, the middle child, is twelve when the books begin; he loves books and is an extraordinary reader. Sunny Baudelaire is a baby in the beginning of the series; she also develops a love for cooking later on in the series. In the early books, Sunny speaks in single word utterances which are often a variety of incomplete sentences or short word sentences. Their meaning is disguised by being spelled phonetically: 'surchmi' in The Slippery Slope; backwards: 'edasurc' [crusade] in The Carnivorous Carnival, and 'cigam' [magic] in The Miserable Mill; through cultural references: 'Matahari', followed by a definition of 'If I stay, I can spy on them and find out.'; phrases: 'Kikbucit?', the phonetic spelling of "kick the bucket", (i.e. dying), in The End; references to people: "Busheney" (an assumed portmanteau of Bush and Cheney) to describe Count Olaf, followed by the definition of "you are a vile man who has no regard for anyone else", or being written in other languages: "Shalom" or "Sayonara." Eventually she begins to speak in more complete English sentences. She has four very sharp teeth and loves to bite things and speaks in random phrases, although her English improves as the series goes on. In The End, she finally learns to speak properly.

The children become orphans after their parents are killed in a fire at the family mansion. In The Bad Beginning, they are sent to live with a distant relative named Count Olaf after briefly living with Mr. Poe, a banker in charge of the orphans' affairs. Count Olaf orders the siblings to cook and clean in his gloomy, dirty house. The siblings discover that he intends to get his hands on the enormous Baudelaire fortune, which awaits Violet when she turns eighteen. In the first book, he attempts to marry Violet, pretending it is the plot for his latest play, but the plan falls through when Violet uses her left hand to sign the marriage document. Klaus also tries to foil the plan by reading up on marriage law.[5]

In each of the first seven books, Olaf disguises himself, finds the children wherever they are and, with help from his many accomplices, tries to steal their fortune, committing arson, murder, and other atrocities along the way. Their roles switch in the eighth through twelfth books, in which the orphans adopt disguises while on the run from the police after Count Olaf frames them for his own murder through use of a body double. The Baudelaires routinely try to get help from Mr. Poe, but he, like many of the adults in the series, is oblivious to the dangerous reality of the children's situation.

As the books continue, the three children uncover more and more of the mystery surrounding their parents' deaths and soon find that their parents were in a secret organization, V.F.D., along with several of their guardians.

The siblings are followed by misfortune wherever they go, but occasionally something good happens. In the fifth book, Violet, Klaus and Sunny make friends with the Quagmires, also orphans who lost their parents in a fire which is suspected not to be a mere coincidence. In The Slippery Slope Violet shares a tender moment with Quigley Quagmire (it is never detailed exactly what happened), who was originally believed to have died in the same fire that killed his parents. In The Grim Grotto, Klaus falls in love with Fiona, who later breaks his heart by leaving them to live with her brother, one of Count Olaf's accomplices. In The End, the Baudelaires attempt to uncover the mystery and finally find a place they can call home. This never happens, however—the mystery is left mostly unsolved, and the remainder of the orphans' life is left under speculation.

Each of the three siblings has a distinctive skill that often helps them in dire situations. Violet always invents things to help them, Klaus always finds out information from books, and Sunny has extremely sharp teeth that can bite almost anything into pieces. In The Ersatz Elevator, Sunny actually manages to climb up an elevator shaft with her sharp teeth in order to save her siblings from a terrible fate.[2] In later books, Sunny begins to grow normal size teeth and learns how to cook which becomes her primary skill. She also learns how to walk in the seventh book, The Vile Village.

[edit] Setting

The books seem to be set in an alternate, "timeless"[6] world with stylistic similarities to both the 19th century and the 1930s, though with contemporary, and seemingly anachronistic scientific knowledge. Credit cards are mentioned in The Bad Beginning. One example of this "technological disconnect" is documented in The Hostile Hospital, where the Baudelaire children send a message via Morse code on a telegraph, yet in the Last Chance General Store, there is fiber-optic cable for sale.[7] An "advanced computer" appears in The Austere Academy, which, while outdated by current standards, is nonetheless more advanced than the earliest computers; this computer's exact functions are never stated, as its only use in the book is to show a picture of Count Olaf (which both Mr. Poe and Vice Principal Nero believe will keep him away), but in the companion book The Unauthorised Autobiography, one of the letters describes the computer as capable of an advanced act of forgery. Also, in The Austere Academy, Mr. Remora mentions that he watched television at a telling of one of his classroom stories, suggesting television exists as well.[8] One of the few clues to the exact date comes towards the end of the final book in the series, where Klaus mentions he plans to read a set of novels by PG Wodehouse, which would put the novel no earlier than the 20th century. The setting of the world has been compared to Edward Scissorhands in that it is "suburban gothic".[6] Although the film version sets the Baudelaires' mansion in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, real places rarely appear in the books, although many are mentioned. For example, in The Reptile Room, Uncle Monty and the Baudelaires plan a trip to Peru; there are also references to the fictional nobility of North American regions, specifically the Duchess of Winnipeg and the King of Arizona. A book in Jerome and Esmé Squalor's library was titled Trout, In France They're Out.[9]